Samoa cupcakes (again)

B's birthday was a few days ago.  I had been thinking about what to bake for his birthday for a while, because I wanted it to be great, but I kept coming back to one thing.  Whenever the fact that I bake comes up, B always mentions my Samoa cupcakes (the ones I made for my friend J's birthday in March).  Considering it's the first thing he mentions -- and the fact that he's told me that he really likes them -- it seemed that I should save my new recipes for another occasion.  (Check back in the next day or two for one of those.)

Now, I have to admit, the Samoa cupcakes are pretty awesome.  And they really were perfect just the way they were, but this time I made two small changes -- one intentional, and one unintentional.  The first was that I made salted caramel buttercream.  That was unintentional, as I quickly grabbed salted butter off the shelf of the grocery store, and didn't realize it until it was warmed up to room temperature and it was late (translation: I didn't have the time to wait for unsalted butter to warm up to room temp).  So I used the salted butter and left out the additional salt that the recipe called for.  It turned out pretty tasty.  The other change was that, due to a lack of time and some forethought, I used store bought dark chocolate syrup, instead of the homemade one I made the first time.  The store bought syrup was super tasty, but it kinda made the icing look a little weird.  It may have been because it was a very warm room temperature.  Next time, I'd go with the homemade one in the future or try chilling the store bought syrup just for the aesthetics of the cupcakes.  But that's just me.

 

The recipe for the Samoa Cupcakes can be found here.